Hacking the Grid

Regular readers of this site will know I am a big fan of the Honl 1/8-inch grid. It is built like a tank, and designed to fit onto nearly any speedlight made.

The first day it arrived at my house (one of the first production samples in the country, as I would later find out) Dave Honl asked to me to test it out and see if it was tough enough.

So I ran over it with my car…
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If memory serves, it was the exact grid pictured above. And to be fair, I have do drive a Scion XA, which is a pretty small car. And I ran over it pretty slowly. But still.

And he did say to test it for toughness. I emailed him back and said, "Yeah, it's pretty tough."

(That'll teach Dave to use me as a beta tester.)

These days I use it so much that it merited a little head-scratching, to see if I could make it faster to slap onto a flash. Dave's velcro mount was made for versatility across lots of different flashes, but I carry half a dozen identical SB-800s with me. So I am more interested in quick-change speed and ease of use.

To that end, my cheapo speed hack:

Rather than the velcro and speed strap mount, I modded mine to go on with an elastic band -- just looped through the grid. I went to my local Target store and got a pack of "Goody Ouchless Comfort Fit Headwraps" for about $2.00 for 8.

Cut into a strip, they fit perfectly through the 1/8" grid patterns -- and of course would also fit the 1/4" grids. I was gonna give the rest of them to my daughter, but they look pretty useful for other black mini bungee-related hacks. Sorry, Em.

In this case, it makes it a near-instant mount whenever I want to restrict the beam of my SB's with the even falloff that only a grid can give you. (That's the main difference between a grid and a snoot.)

And the mod is no knock on the grid, either. I tend to only mod things I use frequently. (And even then, only after finding DIY changes I can make to speed and/or ease my workflow.)

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Got any cool mods of oft-mentioned small flash gear which may be helpful to other readers? Hit us in the comments with your favorite hacks.